


Stolen Soul

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Dollhouse, Supernatural
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, Angst and Humor, Crossover, Demons, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, F/M, Gen, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Sibling Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:35:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is stolen and taken to the Dollhouse to prevent him from ever fulfilling his destiny.  Sam has to try to find him while he and Castiel attempt to avert Apocalyptic signs from destroying the city.  Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the Dollhouse find their newest member may have more to him than his story suggests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hunters_retreat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/gifts).



> Written for [xover_exchange](http://xover-exchange.livejournal.com/9357.html#comments).  
>  **Spoilers** : 5x10 “Abandon All Hope” for Supernatural and 2x04 “Belonging” for Dollhouse

“He’s not drugged. You saw the toxicology report yourself.”

“Well, yeah-.”

“And you’ve heard what he’s been saying.”

“Kinda hard not to…”

“And your professional assessment?” Adele asked.

“He’s a-1 bonkers,” Topher said in defeat.

“Which is the assessment of the psychologist as well. Dean may be lucid, but he has an extreme set of delusions. He has a chance to avoid jail for the crimes he’s committed as a byproduct of his mental problems by taking a term with the Dollhouse.”

“Yeah, but from listening to him…” Topher wiggled a finger in his ear to clear it as Dean’s shouts in the other room reached yet a louder volume. “He’s not going to say yes.”

“Dr. Tregan is quite eager to get him off the streets. He’s hoping the Dollhouse can actually help him by being able to sort through his insanity before his term is up by finding a way to remove his harmful delusions. He’s an acceptable person on whom to attempt this because he’s been living off the grid, alone, most of his life. His family is dead, according to all records we have. Dean has actually been officially dead twice, oddly enough. If this is successful, then we will have uncovered a viable form of treatment for other people with these kinds of mental disorders,” Adele said smoothly, looking far more earnest than Topher had ever seen her before. 

Topher swallowed, looked at the raving Dean through the one-way window in the next room, and nodded. “Ok, let’s bring him up.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took six handlers to process Dean, and he screamed and fought the entire way, breaking two arms and a leg, none of them his. They actually waited until the rest of the Dolls were in bed before starting his processing, when there was less chance of someone wandering in. Echo wasn’t the only Doll who occasionally took an unusual curiosity in doings outside her purview, and Topher had been startled by her one time too many to appreciate an interruption during the induction of another new recruit. There had been enough screw-ups at the Dollhouse in the past few months to warrant all the caution he could muster.

“God damn it, you bastards, what the hell do you want with me? Who’re you working for? Zachariah? I’m not going to let you do it, do you hear me? I am fucking tired of your crap!”

Topher kept his eyes on his equipment, managing to shut out the shouts by dint of muttering to himself. “Scan placement within parameters, all power on full, wavelengths normal as we’re going to get, safety protocols in place…” He puttered, double-checking every reading, not wanting to be fooled again. What had happened with Priya wouldn’t let him go, weighed on his mind, and he didn’t want to take anyone’s word on why someone had been committed to the Dollhouse. If any of Dean’s readings didn’t reflect the story in his file, Topher would pull the plug and make Adele figure out excuses. Somehow.

He let Ivy put the needle-probes into Dean for the initial scan. She needed the practice and he couldn’t make himself get that close. Dean looked like he could break Topher’s neck by accident, and never mind the six pairs of hands holding him down. 

“Just get them in there!” Topher snapped, making a meaningless adjustment and waiting for the influx of data. He didn’t see Ivy make a face behind him, or the handlers try not to smile grimly, or Dean look utterly furious as Ivy carefully speared the probes into his major nerve clusters. As the last one slid home, Topher turned up the power, effectively paralyzing Dean in the chair so they could start the neural mapping and download.

“Ok, let’s get this started,” he muttered mostly to himself, and started the sequence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean had been more scared in his life before. He’d been held at the edge of death by dozens of hostile ghosts, demons, and monsters. He’d died more than once. He’d been shot, stabbed, clawed, bitten, burned, and ripped apart by hellhounds. He’d experienced thirty years of the worst torture imaginable, physically, only to fuck himself over mentally for another ten years. And then do worse to himself once he was back topside, distrusting Sam, helping start the Apocalypse, never managing to do _enough_ , no matter how hard he tried…

Being held down in a chair didn’t quite stack up against all that. 

“What the hell is your angle?” he demanded of the short, nervous man twiddling dials and switches. The men who had held him down were leaving, and the girl who had stuck him full of needles had vanished into another room. Dean felt his entire body seize and tingle as the needles seemed to lock his muscles in place. It didn’t exactly hurt, or rather, Dean had had so much worse that it didn’t bother him much, but not being able to move was getting on his nerves.

The man didn’t answer, just set his shoulders and started to turn a dial slowly.

Light burst around Dean’s head. Suddenly he felt fear, and he didn’t know why.

“Let me go! God damn it, let me go! You know I’m not alone, you fucking know who I work with!” Dean snarled, using bravado to cover the pit in his stomach. Sam would be careful. He knew this could be a trap to take both of them out of action, but with Castiel at his side they should be able to get him out of this place. “You can’t do this! You know what’ll happen. It’s the Apocalypse, asswipe, and me and Sam are…” he trailed off, suddenly confused.

 _Supposed to do… something…_ Dean thought with panic, finding a curious blankness where he was supposed to have certainty. A mission that had filled his blood with fire just moments ago had turned blank and dull. They were doing something to him, somehow had taken something from him. 

_Sam will rescue me. He’ll find me, find my car-._ Dean couldn’t remember what his car looked like. Who’d given it to him? How long had it had it? What was it?

Panic seized him in an icy grip.

 _Castiel can’t find me-. Who’s Castiel? Who’s…? God, God, I have to, need to. Fuck, Sam, my brother he will-. My brother will... My brother…_ Dean couldn’t remember his brother’s name, and realized he was crying just before he forgot his own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean was gone. Sam knew that instinctively even before he woke up. It wasn’t just the empty bed opposite his, or the lack of noise from someone else in the room. It was the lack of _presence_ , what Dean oozed from every pore, whether he was brooding or pouring on the charm. Sam knew he had supposedly lost his demonic mojo, but sometimes he still got feelings, inklings, something a little stronger than hunter’s instincts, and he knew better than to totally discount them.

All of the gear was still in the room, the shower and sink were dry, and the Impala was still parked outside, the keys still on the nightstand. Sam felt a faint thread of unease as he dialed Dean’s number.

 _He’s getting breakfast, don’t need to panic yet,_ Sam told himself sternly. 

The phone went right to voice mail. 

Sam grabbed the keys and went exploring around town, poking his head in every diner, restaurant, post office, library, and auto shop he could find. Then he hit the other hotels and motels, calling Dean every half hour only to have voice mail pick up. Almost frantically he began scouring the job site, the bars, gas stations, and finally ended up back at his own motel around midnight. Dean wasn’t there, hadn’t left a trace, had simply disappeared.

Sam held in alternating waves of fear and anger as he searched around the motel itself with a flashlight, berating himself as fifteen kinds of idiot to have not searched for traces of an abduction earlier. There was more than one way to subdue someone as strong as Dean, and almost all of them would leave some kind of trace…

Three solid hours of searching later, eyes blurring and heart pounding with fear, Sam closed himself back inside his motel room. Nothing. He hadn’t been able to find a God-damned thing. Calls to Bobby and Castiel had yielded nothing; Dean hadn’t contacted them. 

He’d just vanished off the face of the earth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Did I fall asleep?”

Topher dialed the system down to neutral as the chair lifted the new Doll to a sitting position. A quick double-check of his vitals showed no after-effects of the download and wipe to his new Doll-state. He was another job well done: a calm, blank slate ready for anything. 

“For a little while, Romeo,” Topher said, finally turning to face him. It was easier if he didn’t have to look at them during the download. It was easier when he was uploading and downloading regular imprints; Dolls never remembered pain. That hadn’t bothered him before now.

“Shall I go now?”

Topher jerked his head at Ivy, too engrossed in taking a more thorough look at the original imprint to want to bother with the rest of the boring necessary details of the intake procedure. Nothing was going to hurt the guy in the Dollhouse, not with Boyd in charge of security. Topher should have plenty of time to detect anything hinky before Romeo got a handler and went out on assignment. Plenty of time to assuage his new and tender conscience. 

“Go with Ivy if you like. She’s going to take you somewhere and make you feel better.”

“I’d like to feel better,” Romeo agreed amicably, and followed Ivy out of the room with happy docility.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_One week later…_

“Castiel, I’ve checked everywhere we’ve been, every number, every name and alias we have, every credit card number. I’ve called everyone we know-,” Sam silenced himself and dropped his head into his hands. The angel had helped in every way he knew how, and it still hadn’t gotten Dean back. Now they were stuck in another motel a hundred miles from where Dean had been abducted, with no further leads to follow to try to find him. 

Sam had a sore throat from talking, numb hands from typing on his computer constantly, blurry eyes from endless hours on the road, and all for nothing. He couldn’t report Dean missing, couldn’t tap into the missing persons database, couldn’t ask the police for help. He hated to think that this might have been something as simple as a robbery gone bad, that Dean might have just been shot in an alley and then thrown in a dumpster to molder in a landfill. That after everything they’d gone through and everything they’d survived, Dean might have been taken down by some punk in a surprise attack.

“He could be dead,” Sam said finally, a knot in his throat.

“Dean is not dead,” Castiel said, with the same even and unshakable faith that Sam was steadily losing.

“How? How can we know that?” Sam demanded.

“It would have been known to all.”

“Castiel, if you know something, I need to hear it. All of it,” Sam said sternly.

“The demons have had many opportunities recently to kill Dean, but they have not. They have hurt him, you have seen this, but they did not kill him. If he dies, then there is nothing to prevent the angels from killing you in retaliation.”

Sam felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “How would they know? Cas, how?”

“The Enochian symbols I put on you and your brother will prevent your location from being known, but it does not prevent the angels from knowing whether or not Dean is dead. The same for Lucifer and you. He cannot track you, but he will know if you die. There must be a balance. If Dean dies, you will be killed.”

A chill shot down Sam’s spine at the strange intensity in Castiel’s voice. He wondered if he was traveling with his own personal executioner. 

“So, we keep looking, keep trying to do everything we can,” Sam said, the unspoken death threat somehow more comforting than anything he’d learned in the last few months. 

“Yes.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Is he ready?” Adele asked. 

“The tattoo came off ok. The scar did too after a while. Give him a few more days and he’ll be ready to go,” Topher said, blinking wearily at his screen.

“Are you satisfied?”

Topher froze.

“With Romeo’s scan. You’ve been pouring over it for a week.” Adele didn’t ask him why. The staff of the Dollhouse sometimes needed as much coddling as the Dolls themselves in order to keep working smoothly.

“Uh yeah,” Topher said quietly. “A-ok. Everything they said and then some.” He brought up the brain scan on the larger screen and pointed to a few sections. “Whatever happened to him, he was totally believing what he was saying before. He had hotspots in all the trigger areas for violence, a seriously messed up affection matrix, and if his tox screen hadn’t come back clean I would have sworn he was on major amounts of LSD, because there’s some seriously scary stuff in his memories. He’s got a much older brain than I would’ve guessed from his age. Lots of mileage on his cortex.”

“Well then, clearly we stepped in at just the right time, didn’t we? Sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies?” Adele asked.

“Not really.” Topher tapped a different part of the screen and a few other brain scans popped up. “He kinda looks more like some of the police and soldier imprints we have, complete with a healthy dose of PTSD. But whatever he thought he was fighting, it sure wasn’t people.”

“Delusions, like Dr. Tregan said,” Adele reminded him. 

Topher stared at Romeo’s scan for a very long time and finally closed the file. There were no danger signs, not like Alpha, and nothing that didn’t jive with what he’d been told. Everything seemed on the level. “I guess he’s ready for duty.”

Adele smiled and handed him a file. “Good. His new handler will be up in an hour and his first engagement is at six.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_Four months later_

L.A. That the City of Angels was a hotspot for the next round of Apocalyptic signs, some might have found ironic. Most of the rest would have figured it was business as usual. Sam was on the brink of not caring. He hadn’t realized how right Dean had been about them, how they kept each other human, until he was gone. It was worse than their voluntary separation earlier in the year, and even worse than the phantom six months of loneliness the Trickster had forced on him a couple of years ago, because it was real. 

It was only Castiel’s constant reassurance that Dean was alive that was keeping Sam sane. Someone had to deal with the attendant disasters Lucifer’s rising had caused, and Sam was still one of the best hunters around. He moved through things almost automatically, and Castiel’s stoic presence perversely helped Sam keep his edge. Sam didn’t know if Cas was deliberately being more dense than normal about some human things in order to keep Sam _thinking_ instead of reacting, but he was grateful for it.

“The signs point to the campus,” Sam was saying, pointing to the large greenspace on the map. “Tomorrow, that place is going to be a nexus for a ghost rampage.”

“The unquiet dead.”

Sam counted to five. “Yes,” he said tightly. “If we can surround the area with iron or get a circle and lock ritual done, we should be able to stop them before they get out.”

“Then tomorrow, we go.”

“Today,” Sam corrected. “I need to see the place in daylight so I can figure out a plan.”

“My eyes can see in darkness.”

Sam counted to ten. “Cas, _mine can’t_.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Wait, he wants a what?” Topher asked, looking at the operational specs.

“A tutor, for his daughter,” Ivy said. “Medieval literature and Latin. Competent, accomplished, excellent teaching skills, a complete gentleman, and completely seduction-proof.”

“There’s a switch,” Topher muttered. Romeo had lived up to his name, having dozens of romantic engagements during his short time in the Dollhouse. He was very popular for that kind of thing, as everything from just a genial date to a seduce-able guy-next-door to a hard-core dominant or submissive, according to the client’s preference. Asking for Romeo to be seduction-proof seemed like a waste.

“Apparently the daughter has been earning her grades by… convincing her tutors and teachers to give them to her,” Ivy elaborated, spinning out the appropriate files to start building the imprint.

“Classy,” Topher said, snorting with laughter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That can’t be Dean,” Sam said in disbelief. 

“It is,” Castiel said solemnly. Sam resolved to teach Cas about rhetorical questions and statements at some point. Because even though it had to be Dean, it couldn’t possibly be. 

They’d run across him by sheer dumb luck on the college campus, sitting next to a flirty, blonde co-ed. Sam hadn’t been sure it’d been him at first. This was a Dean he’d never seen before: hair longer and neatly parted, wearing a little pair of horn-rimmed spectacles (not glasses, this was decidedly a pair of spectacles), in a suit. A tweed suit. With suede elbow patches. And a goddamned argyle sweater vest. With a fricking pocket watch!

The voice had been what had confirmed Sam’s sudden, painfully hopeful suspicions. Dean’s voice for certain, but with an exquisite English accent, using words Dean never would in a hundred years, earnestly discussing declining Latin verbs. Dean, discussing Latin verbs. And the co-ed next to him couldn’t distract him, no matter how much she leaned forward to show off her assets, or how much she tossed her hair or giggled. It was like Dean didn’t even realize she was flirting. He kept her on task, tapping at her notebook until she obediently wrote something down, and finally smiled and told her she was a “clever rascal.” 

Sam felt his mouth dropping open in shock as the girl took her leave in a daze of confusion, and watched Dean gather up his books in, dear God, a _book strap_ and start to walk across campus. Sam had to talk to him, no matter how strangely he was behaving. It had been four months, four months and absolutely no trace of his brother, and to just run across him on a random job was surreal. Ignoring Castiel’s brief protest that something was wrong, Sam stepped out in front of Dean’s path. 

“Oh! Terribly sorry, young man. You just popped up out of nowhere. Please, excuse me,” Dean said, starting and apologizing in the same breath as he diffidently bobbed his head in apology. He still hadn’t dropped the English accent.

“Dean, it’s me!” Sam blurted, four months of frustration and fear coming to a head.

Dean cocked his head in inquiry and shook it. “I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else. I’m Argyle. Professor Argyle Samuels, lately come across the pond for some experience abroad, as I’m sure you guessed. My pardons, young man, but I do have another appointment across campus and I dare not be late! Quite a lot of knowledge to impart to these young minds!”

He stepped around Sam and trotted off with a cheerful wave. Sam felt like he’d just been hollowed out.

“Sam, I tried to warn you. All is not well with Dean,” Castiel said, stepping out from his place of concealment.

“Cas, it’s him, I know him, that _has_ to be him!” Sam nearly shouted.

“His soul is not all there. Someone has stolen it.”

“How?”

Castiel almost didn’t seem to hear him, and answered absently, as if talking to himself, “I do not know.”

Sam was torn, afraid to let Dean out of his sight, afraid to let whoever might be watching them realize Sam had recognized Dean (a futile hope). He needed to scout out the ghost site and also desperately needed to see whom else Dean might be meeting.

It really wasn’t a choice.

“Cas, please find the site. I’m going to follow Dean.”

For once, Castiel didn’t argue or ask questions. He must have known four months of uncertainty and separation didn’t lend itself to Sam being reasonable.

Shadowing someone across a college campus wasn’t exactly Sam’s forte, but he’d had some experience, and could still fake being in college if he had to. That was the only protection he had-.

Ahead of him, a pale-eyed, brunette woman in a conservative suit moved to intercept Dean, and paused next to him to talk.

“Professor Samuels, would you like a treatment?”

“Of course! That sounds marvelous.” Smiling brightly, Dean let the brunette take his elbow and guide him into an anonymous black van idling nearby. He stepped inside without hesitation, and it took everything Sam had to not just run up and rip him out of there. Coming here in broad daylight had limited Sam’s options, and learning what he had about Dean had given him even more reason to pause. What could he do? Shoot everyone? If Dean had survived four months, even if he wasn’t completely intact, the woman probably wasn’t going to kill him. Dean had been healthy-looking, bright-eyed, well cared-for…

…And hadn’t recognized Sam. They’d stolen part of Dean’s soul, taken his memories, and Zachariah probably wouldn’t have left Sam alone too if he’d decided to mess around with the Winchester brothers. Dean had to say yes to Michael willingly, and if his mind or spirit wasn’t all there, then he couldn’t say yes. It ruled out angels. The Trickster might have decided to mess with Dean, but he wouldn’t have taken his memories; part of the draw for him was watching people squirm in full knowledge of the ridiculousness of the situation. That left demons. The demons couldn’t kill Dean, but why would they take his memories and make him think he was a damned Latin professor? It wasn’t their style.

Frustrated and afraid, Sam wrote down the number of the license plate and stared after the retreating van for a long time. He had to clench one hand into a fist hard enough to almost break the skin with his nails to keep himself from running for the Impala and chasing after Dean’s van. What would that help if he managed to catch the van? What exactly could he say that would get them to let Dean go? What if this was some strange and elaborate trap to bring him close to Lucifer? He might end up getting himself killed. And if he died, whatever was left of Dean would die too. He couldn’t risk it. Time wasn’t on his side, but he’d force himself to be patient if it meant he could figure out what was going on and get Dean back. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Echo had watched the new boy for a long time. When she ate with Victor or Sierra, when they did their painting, she would watch him. Romeo tried very hard to be his best, more than anyone else. He ran a long time, lifted many weights, and swam very far, very fast. He sometimes made himself very tired, and on those nights, he did not wake up until morning. But sometimes, when he didn’t run so far or so fast, he spoke in his sleep. Victor had heard him. He said Romeo called out someone’s name, and Sierra said sometimes he cried. They couldn’t remember everything, but they knew Romeo was unhappy at night. He wasn’t his best inside, and Echo wanted to help.

She waited until they were painting, and sat next to him. Sierra always painted the best pictures, but Echo liked to paint too. Romeo didn’t seem to like to paint as much; he always drew a strange face with yellow eyes, and it didn’t make him happy.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing.

Romeo paused in his painting and looked down at the picture, confused. “I don’t know.” He gazed at it a long time, and pushed it away. “I don’t like it.”

Echo turned the picture over. Victor, brow furrowing, picked it up and crumpled it, putting it into a trashcan.

“Now it’s gone,” Victor said with a small smile. 

“Yes. Thank you,” Romeo said. He looked down on the desk and curled his hands up tightly.

“You don’t like painting,” Sierra said.

“No.”

“I like painting. But you don’t. Maybe you can do something else,” she suggested. Victor looked from her to the trashcan to Romeo, and finally to Echo. She nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, something else you can be the best at,” Echo said. Victor nodded encouragingly and Romeo finally looked up.

“What can I do?”

Echo waved her arm at the rest of the Dollhouse, at all the other rooms, all the other activities available. She used to not be able to remember them all, but she could now. Victor and Sierra could remember a lot of them, when they tried hard. When they were being their best. Echo reminded them to be their best. She reminded everyone she could. But Romeo was the first one who had asked a question. That was good, Echo knew.

“What do you want to do?”

Romeo looked where Echo was pointing, and she could see him trying to focus on each room, to remember.

“I like yoga, it makes me feel calm,” Victor suggested.

Romeo shook his head. “I want… I want to… Build something.”

“Blocks?” Echo suggested.

Romeo nodded, decisively, not with tranquil acceptance. “Blocks,” he said firmly. “I want to build with blocks.” He stood and strode over to where the blocks were stored in a chest, and started to take them out.

“So he can be his best?” Sierra asked Echo, dipping her fingers in the paint again.

“Yes.”

Echo watched Romeo the rest of the morning, watching him make a tower, and then take it down to rebuild it better and stronger than ever. Every time. He remembered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam thought he was going to die. 

It wasn’t because of the job, for once. He’d managed to seal off the place where the ghosts were going to emerge with the simple and available metal benches all over campus. Actually, he’d gotten help from some passing frat boys when he said he was doing it for a stunt, and had plied them away from watching its effectiveness by leading them down to a bar, paying for a round, and then slipping away. At midnight, Sam and Castiel had watched the chill blue light of the ghosts try and fail to break through. 

Preventing them from rising had been relatively simple, but Sam shivered at the pure malevolence he could feel from the dead. These ghosts were murderous and psychotic, and if they’d gotten out, they’d have turned the campus into a charnel house. Thank God (if they could) that he and Castiel had been there to stop them. 

That should have been that. Job done, time to find Dean.

Not even that had turned out right.

“It will happen again,” Castiel had announced.

“Cas, we stopped it,” Sam said stubbornly, honestly on the verge of not caring no matter how important it had been. He had been doing his damn duty for humanity for a hell of a long time without recompense, indeed with an escalating series of losses of his lifestyle, friends, family, sanity, and freedom. The single glimpse of Dean had given him a shot of hope, but it was tainted with the knowledge that Dean was badly damaged and out of immediate reach.

“We deflected it,” Castiel explained. “The unquiet dead will attempt to breach at another location. The seal here was less than ideal.”

Sam wanted to scream at him, to throw a proper tantrum that he hadn’t mentioned it earlier, but he knew Cas could be right. He just hadn’t made the time or privacy to put a proper circle and ritual lock on the place. He’d just hoped the hundreds of pounds of iron would have done the trick, sealing the place with brute force to make up for the lack of finesse. Tricking half-drunk frat boys was one thing, doing spells was something else entirely, and not something Sam wanted to attempt when he was half out of his mind with worry for his brother.

“Do you know where they’ll try to come up again?” Sam asked tightly.

Castiel hesitated, but spoke with perfect confidence.

“It will continue in the sign of a pentagram until the unquiet dead are released or sealed away. The nexus points will be visible on a map.”

Sam counted to ten. In English _and_ Latin. And waited until they were back at the motel before talking further.

The nexus points were visible, or at least the possibilities were. Every park, tiny greenspace, or terrace was a possible point where the ghosts could emerge. Apparently this batch of spooks needed open air in order to leave their prison, which at least spared Sam the irritation of trying to coax Castiel into lying their way into a building by claiming to be FBI agents or building inspectors. 

“When do they try again? And how many attempts will they make?”

Castiel hesitated again and Sam started to get suspicious. The hesitation reminded him of himself when he was trying to temporize an answer that wouldn’t get him yelled at. Cas was hiding something.

“They will make one attempt each night at midnight until they’ve broken through.”

Sam swore under his breath. There were up to a _dozen_ possible places where the ghosts could attempt to rise, places that would each have to be checked, charted, and then attempted to be sealed properly. Doing that would take all day: time spent saving the city that otherwise Sam could be using to try to find Dean. 

“What else? You’re holding back,” Sam asked, bent over the map, staring at it to hide the anger that was all over his face.

There was a long moment of silence from Castiel before he spoke. “The sealing ritual must be done by two human casters to give it enough power to stop this many unquiet dead. If it is not, the seal will always be imperfect.”

Sam refrained from slamming his fist into the table by a huge act of will. He needed Dean working alongside him to get this job done. 

_Dean isn’t here, and if you spend time looking for him, you won’t find where the ghosts will emerge and half the city will die,_ the coldly logical part of him said.

For a minute Sam debated trying to find another hunter in L.A. Surely he wasn’t the only one in the city… but he was the only one with an angel at his side that could sense the ghosts. And he was the only one that Lucifer was trying to find. Protected from angel-sight or not, he was still a prime target for any number of nasties, and he didn’t want to draw anyone else into his private circle of hell on earth. Dean had already signed on for life; Sam wouldn’t ask any other hunter to risk losing all his family and friends for helping him.

“Castiel, could Jimmy do it?” Sam asked slowly. Castiel actually started at the name of his vessel, and looked profoundly uncomfortable.

“He could not. If I leave, I may be attacked and unable to return. And he has given his word that I could stay until my task is done. We must find another way.”

But Sam knew there was no other way. Not when the lives of millions were at stake and only he and Castiel stood any chance of even delaying the inevitable, night after night after night after night…

What made Sam feel like he was going to die was the fact that he kept seeing Dean all over town during the next two weeks. At a coffee shop flirting with a plain and frankly ugly young woman whose face lit up at the attention. In the street arm-in-arm with a fifty-year-old cougar in barely-legal clothing. Going into a club, wearing leather pants so tight he couldn’t be wearing anything under them, a collar and leash around his throat in the hand of another man. In an alley on his knees, head bobbing in the lap of some unseen person. Skateboarding in the park. Surfing at the beach. Pushing a stroller with a toddler in the seat. Walking a dog. Riding in a car. Zooming by on a motorcycle, a girl clinging to his waist and screaming in excitement as they outraced the cops…

And Sam wasn’t sure it was him every time. It was all in sideways glimpses, running from one part of the city to the other in time to find the next nexus point and stop it from boiling over with murderous ghosts. Some of it was probably his imagination, just wanting to see Dean was making him see him where he wasn’t. But the other times… It had to be. That’s what was killing him. 

Every lead he tried to investigate on Dean’s whereabouts had come up dry. The license plate to the mysterious black van had come up registered to a holding company. Sam had backtracked it through three more false fronts and still didn’t have a legitimate address to where the damn thing might be from. Any further sightings of the pale-eyed brunette that sometimes seemed to hang around Dean had also yielded nothing: no name or address where he could try to ask her more questions. Just once Sam wanted to call the whole job off until he could get something solid. Just one evening to go to the places where he’d seen Dean and flash his picture around until he found someone who’d seen _something_.

But no. He couldn’t. Not unless he wanted to see the City of Angels turn into the City of Blood.

The only time he had to himself was the few hours he’d devoted to sleep, the hours he _had_ to have if he was going to be anywhere near sharp. Those were the worst times, the times he sent Castiel away in order to have some privacy, lying alone in his motel bed, no sound of breathing nearby, knowing he was alone and had been for months. Knowing Dean was out there, damaged and without his soul, some kind of sick puppet for whoever was holding him, and being unable to get close without risking both of their lives.

Sam missed his presence, his stupid metal music in the Impala, his juvenile jokes and craving for crappy food, his way of instantly understanding Sam’s moods and quirks without having to have anything explained, his partnership, _being brothers_ … God damn them, Sam missed some things even more, his closeness, his touch even. 

They hadn’t done it that often, maybe a dozen times over the course of their lives, and only when things had gotten so bad, when they’d needed to be connected so desperately, that they’d broken the most stringent of taboos to try to reconnect viscerally and physically so they could be whole again. When Sam had returned from the dead. When Dean had returned from Hell. The night their father had died. When they’d discovered they’d had another brother and lost him before they knew him. Rarely since they’d met Castiel, mostly out of fear, but if Dean had walked in the door right now, Sam would have taken him right out in the open, the angel’s opinion be damned. 

Face pressed in the pillow to muffle his moans and soak up his tears, Sam let his hand stray lower, under his boxers to close around the aching hardness of his cock, wanting to pretend it was Dean’s hand on him, urging him to give it up and relax.

_“Just let it all out, Sammy, I got you. Come on, come for me, it’s ok.”_

The heat of him was always incredible, cradling Sam back against his chest, making sure Sam was all right, that he was taken high and left there so Dean’s kiss would plummet him back into his skin. Then he’d be ready to turn and give Dean what he wanted, pushing him down and opening him up, that Dean would envelope him and be able to keep him safe, delaying his own pleasure for as long as Sam needed so they could scream together…

His climax was fast and hard, just like Dean liked to give it. Sam shouted into the pillow and sobbed once, letting out the frustration and anger in a single burst. It was just enough, just barely enough, to get him through another day. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Aw, that’s kind of adorable, in a really creepy way,” Ivy was saying. “These guys just want to save a princess from the evil demons.”

“Live-action role playing is not adorable,” Topher declared. “It’s just plain weird.”

“I hate to break it to you, but have you _seen_ where we work?” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but at least the Dolls don’t _know_ they’re LARPing… Hell, look at these specs,” Topher groused, examining the list for the assignment with great irritation. “I’d need a week to get this set up, not a few hours!”

“Look, I’ll get Echo’s. It’s a simple damsel-in-distress scenario for her,” Ivy said. 

“Sure, take the easy one,” Topher muttered, and bent to his task. The assignment had hit his system only minutes before: a client wanting an intense LARPing experience for him and several of his buddies. He wanted a real “damsel” to rescue, one who would be “properly grateful” for being saved. And he wanted a character actor to help with verisimilitude of the scenario, someone based off of some cult sci-fi books, the “Supernatural” series.

The client wanted what he called “the real Dean Winchester.” The hunter of the supernatural, ghost killer, demon-stalker, bane of all eldritch evils… Topher giggled a little at the list of attributes and history requested, and then broke off when he realized why they sounded so damn familiar. Romeo. It was an uncanny echo of Romeo’s original imprint.

Had Romeo been a crazed fan or just a guy who’d suffered some kind of break from reality and had latched onto those silly books as a lifeline? Topher couldn’t know for certain without going through every single moment of Romeo’s personal history, and he really, truly, honestly didn’t want to do that. But this assignment…

Topher clenched his jaw and pulled Romeo’s file. Screw it. The client had asked for a scenario that should have had a lead-time of a month and had instead paid premiums to make sure it could happen by this evening. The actors the client had originally hired had bailed, and the client was just enough of a freak and perfectionist (not to mention richer in dollars than sense) to want Dolls to fill the roles the original actors had spent weeks perfecting. Topher thought he could actually do some good with this insane timetable.

The client wanted Dean Winchester. He wanted the full knowledge of the “Supernatural” world and rules, but he wanted Dean to know that he lived in the real world so the players could be safe and they could all go out for beer and pizza afterwards. Wasn’t that what was going to happen to Romeo eventually? After he’d paid off his debt to society, Adele would have Topher fix Romeo’s original imprint, removing those harmful delusions and violent impulses so he could be ok in the real world. This… could be a trial run of that. Copy the original imprint and throw in enough safety measures to ensure both client and Doll would be all right… Topher was happily engaged on his computer for a couple of hours, tweaking things this way and that to fulfill yet another unobtainable dream. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Echo, Romeo, will you go see Topher, please?”

Romeo looked up from his blocks with some surprise, his expression of concentration broken. Shaking his head, he began to put the blocks away as Echo began to seal her paints. The handler walked a little ways away to talk to someone, and Echo leaned down to help Romeo tidy up his space.

“We’re going out together,” she whispered. 

Romeo nodded slowly, eyebrows knitting together. “Maybe I’ll see him again.”

Echo nodded encouragingly and patted Romeo’s pocket. He had a small picture in there, painted by Sierra, of something he thought he remembered from his times out. Echo had pushed him to remember something every time he came down from Topher’s room, asking him over yoga sessions or block building. Most times he couldn’t, but some times he said he remembered someone. 

“A man. Tall. Protects me, like Juliet,” was all he could ever say. 

Echo smiled. Juliet was like Paul: she protected people, and if the tall man Romeo remembered could do that, then he was a good man. Not like the one Sierra had remembered, the one who was gone now. Sierra had been happy to paint the protective man for Romeo. It didn’t look a whole lot like a person, just a smear of color with the suggestion of eyes and a smile, but Romeo had said it was just right. After he had the picture, he could remember more easily. He made tally marks now, showing each time he’d seen him. It was a lot of times recently. That was good. If they were going out, maybe he’d see the man again. Maybe he would talk to the man, or the man would talk to him, and they would both remember. Then they’d both be their best. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“They’re in,” Paul said, shutting the door to the van behind him and sitting down next to Romeo’s handler at the monitors. Her name was actually Jamie, but no one had been surprised at her getting tagged with the nickname Juliet the second she’d gotten assigned to Romeo.

“Settle in, this is going to be a long one. The client planned an all-nighter,” she said, handing him a coffee.

Paul looked at the monitors closely, even though Echo was highly unlikely to have any kind of risk in this scenario. She might well get bored, “tied up” and waiting to get rescued, but stood no real chance of getting hurt. And, hopefully, no real chance of remembering something she wasn’t supposed to and going off-grid either. Paul only hoped she hadn’t managed to meddle with Romeo too much; he’d noticed him spending time with Echo, Victor, and Sierra. The weapons the client was using were blunted, but still could present a danger if Romeo started glitching. Paul made sure his own weapons were secure before sitting down, and hoped Topher had double-checked his work this time. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s close,” Castiel said, pointing into the junkyard. Sam stared at the huge maze of crushed cars and piles of twisted metal with amazement. The place was huge. He had no idea how they were going to be able to get to the place in time even though they’d arrived hours early. Though their work might be done for them if the place of emergence was covered by cars. 

Taking a deep breath to help him focus, Sam began to examine the place more closely when his eye caught a vehicle parked further down the fence. It was the van. That damned black van that Sam had been seeing around town sometimes when he thought he’d spotted Dean. It was _right there_ , not even a dozen yards away, parked along the fence. Sam tuned out Castiel, the job, everything, and _ran_ straight for the van. He caught himself at the last second, skidded to a halt, and pulled the slim jim from an inner pocket to trip the locked door. Drawing his gun, he took a deep breath and threw the door open.

Inside, in front of bank of monitors, the pale-eyed brunette and a tough-looking man in a suit had their own weapons drawn and pointed at him.

“Where’s Dean?” Sam demanded, not wavering his grip one inch.

The man exchanged a lightning-quick glance with the woman, both of them looking at first confused, and then amused. They didn’t slacken their grip on their weapons, but lost the hair-trigger edge of vigilance. 

“Uh, the game is actually _inside_ the junkyard, pal,” the woman said carefully. “And you should know better than to bring a real weapon to a LARP. Dwayne always enforces the rules and he won’t like it.”

Sam felt incredibly confused. “I don’t know about any damned game, or LARP, or Dwayne,” he spat. “I _do_ know that damn near every time I’ve seen _you_ , you’ve been hanging around my brother. I don’t know what you did to him, or how the hell you’ve been making him do what I’ve seen him do, but I want you to let him go. Now!”

“I think you have the wrong idea. ‘Dean’ is an actor, he was hired for this LARP. We’re his bodyguards. We’re supposed to be monitoring this for him. If you’re a fan of his, you’ll just have to wait until after he’s done,” the woman said smoothly. Behind her, the man had firmed his grip on his weapon.

Sam was starting to see red, and recklessly dove his hand into his jacket to pull out a picture of him and Dean. It was a few years old, one Bobby had taken after they’d finished rebuilding the Impala, but it clearly showed both of their faces. It was the one he’d been going to use to find Dean if he’d gotten the chance. 

“This is him. This is my brother, Dean Winchester.” Sam thrust the picture towards the woman and she stared at it, eyes going wide. Sam recognized that look, that was the “oh, shit” expression.

“Paul, call Topher,” she said tightly.

“Juliet-.”

“Do it!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Aw yeah, this is my baby right here,” Dean said fondly, patting his boss’s black Impala appreciatively. “Dwayne, you got all the details right man, this looks awesome.”

“Thanks man! Uh, what do you think about the rest of the set-up?”

“It’s right on, my man. So, ghost hunt, yeah?”

“Right!” Dwayne said, slicking his hair back nervously. “Gather ‘round everyone!” he shouted to the rest of the LARPers. 

“The Apocalypse is upon us!” Dwayne shouted dramatically. “The unquiet dead are about to rise unless we can find a way to stop them! The demons are determined to see the dead rise, and they’ve captured a sacrifice to open the gateway!”

Which wasn’t exactly how it went in the books, but it gave Dwayne the opportunity to save a hot chick, which was sort of the point of the whole game. Dwayne might be an overweight nerd, but he was a huge Supernatural fan. So much so he’d been able to use his contacts at a publishing company to get advance copies of the new Supernatural books Charles Edlund was going to put out. It was going to make for a killer game.

Dean listened as Dwayne outlined the new Supernatural storyline, everything from the end of the last books. The other players hung onto every word, but Dean found himself getting inexplicably angry as Dwayne detailed what had happened to and between the Winchester brothers after Dean had come back from hell. It felt like a violation, like someone was telling his life story to strangers, and he couldn’t understand why. He was just a character actor, a good one that happened to share the same first name as one of his favorite characters. Having other people hear about that character shouldn’t feel like someone was putting his soul on public display.

Dean shook his head to try to dispel the feeling and double-checked the popguns and prop knife he had stuck in his belt. All he had to do here was guide Dwayne through the maze to where the “ghosts” were going to be, taking care of any ambushes on the way, help him fight off some “demons,” and then Dwayne would rescue the “sacrificial victim.” Dean would get paid a crapload of cash and Dwayne would get laid. It wasn’t a bad wage for six hours’ work. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Topher swatted at the ringing phone, barely breaking pace as he tried to annihilate a few more pixels on his computer screen.

“Resident genius,” he answered.

“Topher, it’s Paul. We have a situation with Romeo.”

_“Who the hell is Romeo?”_

A second voice could be heard in the background, a seriously pissed-off voice, and not one Topher recognized. His stomach froze, and he quit the game without a second thought, quickly pulling up Romeo’s bio monitor screen. He was terrified he’d find him glitching like Echo, and felt almost faint with relief when everything came back nominal.

“He looks fine from here,” Topher said tentatively, wondering if he should call Adele. Or Boyd. Or maybe Boyd had already heard and was on his way down. Topher considered if he had enough time to run if that were the case. Probably not. 

“Who did you use for the imprint?” Juliet asked urgently.

“Uh… what do you mean?” Topher tried to stall as he pulled up the files, the frozen feeling in his stomach rapidly becoming something like pain. Had he messed up again? Was this going to be like Priya all over again?

“Topher!” Juliet barked. It snapped him out of his daze and right into talking without stopping to think what he was saying.

“Ok, ok, I used his original! I mean, I modified it so he’d know all this ghost stuff wasn’t real and he wouldn’t be violent because he was like some crazy superfan of this ‘Supernatural’ series before he came in and this was why he was here so he could pay for what he’d done and then we’d fix all the delusions and crap before he left and I thought this would be a good trial run and I had like four hours’ lead time on this imprint so sue me for trying a shortcut!” Topher gasped for air when he’d finally gotten all that out and waited for the other shoe to drop.

 _“You have stolen his soul,”_ a different voice declared in the background, a deep and raspy voice with no compromise in it. 

“No!” Topher shouted. “No! I didn’t, he was sick, I was helping, I didn’t-.” He stopped himself and quickly grabbed a stress ball to squeeze until he was sure he wasn’t going to throw up. 

_“Sam, midnight is approaching. We must find Dean and quickly if we are to stop the rising of the dead,”_ the raspy voice continued. _“Christopher, you must return all of Dean’s soul to him, or he will be consumed by the murderous ghosts before he can be saved.”_

Topher hadn’t heard his full first name used since he was five, and it shocked him out of his nausea.

“Look, I don’t know who you two think you are, or what the hell you’re babbling about ghosts and souls, but if you don’t back off right now you’re both going to regret it!” Juliet said sternly.

Topher could hear something in the background, a creaking like someone was stepping in or out of the van.

_“If you must prove your faith, do it now. Fire, and believe.”_

_“Cas, don’t-.”_

_“There is no time, Sam, not if we are to save your brother.”_

“Last chance, whack-job,” Juliet said, and Topher could hear the safety come off.

 _“I will not move,”_ the raspy voice said solemnly.

_Bang! Bang!_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam almost had a heart attack when Castiel had pushed past him to put himself in the line of fire, but shuddered in relief in the next second when Juliet’s bullets went right through the angel with no visible effect. Both her and Paul’s jaws dropped, and Juliet actually checked her gun for the spent bullets, and Castiel himself for a vest. Sam watched her suddenly begin to believe when she found the spent rounds and no protection between Cas and what should have been two fatal shots.

“My brother,” Sam repeated. Juliet looked up at him, her face white with shock. “Look lady, I don’t care if you believe in ghosts or not, but you know where Dean is, and how to fix him, and I need him back.”

 _“Wait, brother? Romeo’s family is supposed to be dead!”_ Topher yelled through the phone.

“Obviously someone lied to you!” Sam snapped.

_“Dr. Tregan wouldn’t-.”_

“Dr. Tregan?” Sam interrupted. The name sounded familiar. It hadn’t been all ghosts, over the past several months he and Castiel had been taking out zombies, monsters, and demons galore… “About three months ago, we met someone with that name. Tall guy in his sixties, blonde, with glasses…”

_“Yeah, that’s him!”_

“He’s dead. He was possessed, the demon killed him when it left-.” Sam stopped talking, taking the clues into consideration. Tregan had captured Dean, or at least been part of it, had delivered him to these people, the demon inside the doctor knowing it would be an effective way to get Dean out of the way without killing him.

“Demon?” Paul asked, sounding somewhere in between incredulous and resigned.

“If you don’t believe in demons, then pretend the man was on crack, I don’t care. He wasn’t in control of himself and it killed him,” Sam said, not willing to waste more time. “It had to be a trick so you’d take Dean. I don’t have any more time to argue with you people. Now _where is he?”_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere outside the junkyard a car backfired twice, but Dean ignored it. His prop EMF was going crazy, thanks so some clever little transmitters Dwayne had scattered around the place, and it meant they were going to get ambushed pretty soon. They had to be close; this was the third group of bad guys they’d run into. The whole atmosphere was charged with malice, and it felt positively frigid. Maybe he was just psyching himself out for the role, but Dean had rarely felt this… connected to a part before. It really felt like he was on his way to a den of evil spirits.

Roars from either side heralded an attack, and Dean swung his popgun into play, firing off round after round of fake rock salt bullets into the white-clad “ghosts,” shouting at Dwayne to cover his side. Predictably, even though Dwayne tended to shoot wide, the ghosts crumpled anyway. Dean shook his head as he leveled his gun at the last ghost and blew it away-.

_-blew it away, dissolving into smoke and ether as the salt imbedded in the wall in the other side. “You ok, Sammy?” he called._

Dean stumbled from a burst of memory so strong it had blocked out everything for a moment. Memory… couldn’t be. He didn’t know anyone called Sammy in real life. It was like a vivid representation of something from the book series but… couldn’t be. 

“Dean, you ok?” Dwayne called anxiously.

“Yeah, yeah, just… a bit tired. Let’s go man, forty-five minutes to midnight.”

Reloading his gun, Dean began loping towards the center of the junkyard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Topher?” Paul asked. 

“Dr. Tregan is dead,” Topher said numbly, looking at the obituary on screen. Seeing some kind of confirmation of what Sam had said had pretty much put him out on a ledge. Topher felt like he was perched on the edge of something huge, and he could either let himself fall, or just cling to the ground, or let go and fly.

“Is it true about Romeo?” Juliet demanded.

“I just checked the original, yeah, he has a brother named Sam.”

A beat of silence between the three Dollhouse employees, and Topher knew that Sam and Cas were waiting for them to do the right thing. If they didn’t… apparently there was a bulletproof man and a desperate family member with a gun in the van with Paul and Juliet, and if the two handlers died, Echo and Romeo would be on their own. 

Priya had had no safe place to go, which was why she’d come back to the Dollhouse. Dean had family that would do anything to get him back.

Topher decisively spun up some other files, the ones he’d been working on for Adele. 

“I gave Romeo his original imprint, but put blocks and mods on some of his memories. I didn’t actually change anything underneath, just put more stuff on top to make sure he was to specs,” he told the others.

“Topher, English,” Paul warned.

“I’m going to do a partial remote wipe to get rid of everything I did and leave him with his original imprint.”

“You can do that?”will do that,” Topher said harshly. The silence from Juliet and Paul showed their complicit agreement. Either that or they’d been shocked into speechlessness. 

_“Thank you, Christopher, for returning Dean’s soul to him.”_ That was the deep-voiced man, the one that sounded like he was pronouncing things from on high. Topher shuddered at his words. He’d been called a lot of things, amoral, a genius, reckless, a technical wizard, foolish, brilliant, but never a soul-stealer, or at least not to the point where he believed it. He never wanted to hear that again.

“Give me an hour.”

 _“You have forty-five minutes before the shit hits the fan, Topher. Do it,”_ Sam said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Whoa.”

Dean rounded the last pile of crushed cars to see a huge circle inscribed in the ground, a pretty young woman tied up in the middle of it being menaced by two “demons” with their black sclera contacts and sneering expressions. Dwayne stepped up next to him, wheezing a bit from all the running, but still grinning widely at the pure awesomeness of it all. Dean couldn’t blame him: this was the best game he’d ever played. The costumes were insane, the gear was top-notch, and Dwayne was a pretty good player, even if he couldn’t shoot for shit.

“Help me!” the girl shouted. “Please!”

The demons took a few steps forward-.

_forward, black eyes blazing with menace. Sam stretched out his hands and clenched his fist, black smoke pouring from their mouths and burning into the floor. Dean barely had time to see it as he swung Ruby’s knife to slit the throat of another demon who’d been about to kill him…_

“-never free her! Her blood will set the dead free to paint this town red with blood! BWAHAHAHAHA!” 

“I don’t think so, you demon slime!” Dwayne shouted, and tossed salt at the advancing demons.

They shouted and cringed convincingly, writhing in apparent pain.

“Uh, Dean?” Dwayne asked, jerking his head at the actors.

Dean snapped back to the present. Right. He pulled out the rune-covered wooden dagger, the safe version of Ruby’s knife, and plunged into the fray. Ducking and weaving between the demons, he stabbed one in his padded armor and slashed at the other as Dwayne slipped past and hauled the girl to safety. The first demon “died” dramatically and the other screamed blood-curdling oaths of vengeance, long enough to give Dwayne enough time to get clear before Dean “killed” the other demon too.

_The blood dripped to the floor from Alastair’s mouth and Dean’s hands as the demon grinned at him, knowing he was losing a piece of himself with every cut he made to try to extract information._

The girl called Dwayne her hero and gave him a hearty kiss as Dean tried to recover from another unexpected burst of vivid memory. 

_I’ve been working too hard, damn, need to lay off the energy drinks…_ Dean told himself, shaking his head. 

Fear suddenly pooled in the pit of his stomach, and Dean felt an atavistic need to get off the circle inscribed in the ground.

“Guys, let’s go home. We can stop by Mickey’s on the way out of here, beer’s on me!” Dean said cheerfully, letting a smile cover up his unease. 

“Aw, come on Dean, don’t break character yet!” Dwayne whined as the “dead demons” stirred.

“It’s late, man, let’s get out of here. This place is seriously giving me the creeps.”

The fear was starting to grow, and the demon actors seemed to pick up on it, getting as antsy as he was.

“Yeah, Mr. Williams, please, it’s really cold out here. Can we go home?” one of them asked, popping out the sclera contacts.

Dwayne looked stubborn, but the girl- what was her name? Angie, that was it- Angie put her hand around his waist and whispered in his ear.

“Ok, ok, I’m outvoted, let’s get going!” he said with a laugh.

Dean relaxed a hair, feeling like he’d just dodged some unknown bullet, when the fear returned, redoubled. Cold hammered up from the ground, frost spreading like a stain, their breath all hanging in the air. Cold blue light began to spread with the frost, and Dean retreated from it instinctively.

“Guys, let’s get the hell out of here!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Use the phone, just get it to Romeo’s- Dean’s ear and let him listen,” Juliet said, still looking pale and shaken. “It’s almost time for the endgame, they should be at the center of the junkyard.”

“Juliet, get back in here, Echo and Romeo’s stress levels just spiked!” Paul called.

Sam and Castiel looked to the junkyard. Sam didn’t need the angel’s extraordinary senses to know the ghosts were coming, and soon. He closed his eyes as Castiel grabbed his shoulder, and felt his feet leave the ground.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dean!”

Dean whirled around to see a dark haired man in a trench coat and a much taller one in a pale jacket right behind him.

“Who the hell?!” he yelled.

“Dean, it’s me, it’s Sam!”

_-his brother, the man he’d trusted above all others, had picked a demon over him-_

_“I’m sorry Dean, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll make it up to you, I swear-.”_

_“-We keep each other human, Sammy.”_

“I don’t know anyone named Sam. Look dude, we have to get away from here. I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t want to stay to find out!” Dean said. He wasn’t willing to include these strangers in whatever little personal meltdown he was experiencing.

The two demon actors were already gone, and Dwayne had run away screaming, but Angie had suddenly appeared at his side. She looked at him strangely, not in the cutely suggestive way he’d seen earlier before they’d all gotten ready, but in a way that was both childlike and protective. She handed him a folded piece of paper, and he felt a jolt of memory, of strange calmness and firm determination.

“Dean, you must take this,” the dark-haired man said solemnly, holding out a phone. Dean’s mind seemed to slow as he looked between the paper, the phone, and the rising sense of menace at his back.

“Dean, please!” Sam said, stepping forward to grab Dean’s shoulders and look him in the face, silently pleading for understanding-.

_-silently pleading for him to give in, to surrender. Dean threw his head back even as he gripped Sam harder with his hands, drawing him deeper, further into his body, wanting everything Sam could give him. He needed to be closer, connect with him, try to bridge the gap they’d made from separating themselves at a time when they needed each other more than ever._

_“Yeah Sammy, give it to me, please!” Dean let himself break as Sam silenced him with his mouth, hips slamming hard as the flood of heat burst inside him…_

“Sam…?” Dean said tentatively.

“Dean, it’s me!” Sam sounded frantic, and the feeling of menace at Dean’s back intensified.

“Look at the picture,” Angie said, her voice high and childlike. As if in a trance, Dean unfolded the picture, seeing a smear of colors and the suggestion of eyes and a smile-.

Sam’s eyes. Sam’s smile. Brother. Friend. 

Dean lifted the phone to his ear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Topher had never prayed for a miracle in his life. But the old saying was apparently true: there were no atheists in foxholes, or for those in the midst of life-or-death technological struggles. Fingers burning from the rapid-fire programming, he jabbed the send button so hard he nearly broke it, and felt a palpable relief as the tones were transmitted to Juliet’s phone.

_I’m not a damned soul-stealer._

_Not ever._

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean started as he jerked the phone away from his head, whirling to see the freezing mists of impending undead doom starting to coalesce behind him. What the hell were they doing just standing here looking like someone had just died?

“Sam, move your ass, we need to seal this thing!” he snapped. “Hallmark moments later!”

Sam let out something that sounded suspiciously like a sob as he moved to the far side of the circle. Dean checked his watch, almost midnight. Damn, this was going to have to be a rush job.

He spat out the words of the sealing ritual as fast as he could without slurring them, trusting Sammy to get his own responses right. They’d done shit like this too many times to screw up now; he refused to even contemplate failure. He ignored everything but Sam and the ghost-circle, knowing Cas could take care of the girl. 

Each phrase, spoken in tandem, activated the runes on the circle, making them glow with golden light. Palpable heat poured from them, driving back the chill of the grave. Arcs of light began to weave between the paired runes from Sam’s side to Dean’s, making a cage of power and heat that began to contract over the rising cold and fear in the center of the circle. The words got harder to speak as the light descended over the rising ghosts, the dead fighting the power of the living. It felt like something was trying to push him away, to make him stop, to give up and give in to the inevitable. Just take a step sideways and burn up in the power, or take a step forwards and let the dead take him…

Dean looked across the circle at Sam, trembling with exertion, and forced the words out even though the air itself seemed to be fighting him. He’d been taken and used, separated from Sam, forced away from saving the world, and now he was back. Even the dead had to realize that no one, _no one_ forced the Winchester brothers to do anything.

Sam’s voice joined his, ripping across the too-solid air, and the light _slammed_ into the chill, white ground with a roar of fire covering up the furious screams of thwarted ghosts. Heat exploded outward from the circle, knocking Dean back over a half dozen yards of ground and into a crushed car. 

When the pain stopped, and his vision finally came back, Dean blinked to see the circle had been melted into an enormous puddle of flawed black glass from the heat of the spell. He could only stare at it for a long moment, until Sam came into his line of vision, looking down at him as if he were afraid Dean was going to vanish in the next second. 

“Cutting it a little close, Sammy?” Dean asked into the deafening silence, watching Sam’s reaction. 

He supposed he would have deserved a punch in the face for a remark like that. Instead Sam just caught him up in a bone-crunching hug and refused to let him go. Dean just let his joints get relocated as he gave Sam back everything he had and more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Where are Romeo and Juliet?” Boyd asked

Paul didn’t even pause as he directed Echo into Topher’s lab.

“Romeo split and she went after him. You really shouldn’t rush Topher’s work,” he said blandly.

Boyd watched for a moment as Topher started Echo’s wipe, knowing Topher was very carefully ignoring him.

“What happens when we rush Topher’s work?”

“We end up taking shortcuts when we don’t have enough time to check the background properly. Then people can get hurt,” Paul said, crossing his arms. 

Echo blinked sleepily as she rose from her chair, going through her call-and-response set with Topher before she stepped from the room. She paused at the doorway and turned back.

“Romeo is happy,” she said, and walked away.

Boyd took a single deep breath and turned back to Topher. He was fiddling with his knobs and buttons nervously, shoulders hunched as if for a blow.

“Topher,” Boyd said, and Topher looked up nervously, seemingly trying to hide behind his bangs. “I apologize for rushing your work. Adele and I will do everything we can to make certain an accidental loss like that doesn’t happen again.”

Boyd turned and left, Paul a moment after him after giving Topher a small nod of encouragement.

Topher didn’t care who saw as he slumped down on the floor, holding a folded piece of paper in his hands, something Echo had given him. Opening it, he saw a smear of color and the suggestion of eyes and a smile. It was signed “Dean.” 

Swallowing hard, Topher walked over and stuck it to his refrigerator. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What do you remember?” Sam asked. 

Castiel was politely spending the evening away, carefully explaining the enormity of the whole Apocalypse situation to a very receptive Juliet, who’d suddenly found herself in need of a new line of work. She’d probably make a great hunter once she got over the shock-and-awe stage of things. That had left Sam and Dean alone in their motel, and by mutual agreement, in the same bed.

Dean shifted. His body curled around Sam’s, ignoring the twinge of pain from the new anti-possession tattoo on his chest, freshly inked this morning. “Bits and pieces mostly. I mean, I remember me. I remember most of the junkyard. Juliet. Castiel. You.” Another beat of silence. “The girl. Her name’s not Angie, but I don’t know what it really is. She was helping me, trying to get me to remember.” Another pause. “That’s about it really. I’m missing a hell of a lot of time between when Tregan’s goons grabbed me and last night.”

“I thought I was going insane. I kept seeing you everywhere… The things those people were having you do…” Sam whispered, seeing Dean in a hundred different guises in his mind’s eye.

“Do I even want to know?”

“People’s dates, a lot of the time, I think.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad-.”

“Sex slave bitch.”

“Did I have a collar?”

“Dean!”

“What? A guy’s allowed to think about it!”

Sam filed that idea away for future use.

“Babysitter, dogwalker-.”

“Boring!”

“Latin professor.”

“Bullshit,” Dean said, snorting with laughter.

“Shit you not, with a tweed suit and an English accent, declining Latin verbs.”

“Damn,” Dean sounded thoughtful. “Bet that got you all hot and bothered, brainiac.

“How can you laugh about it?” Sam demanded. “Dean, you were _gone_. Castiel said they’d stolen your _soul!”_

Dean wrenched Sam’s head around for a hard kiss, prolonging it with intimate skill of a lifetime’s worth of illicit affection. “I’m gonna laugh,” Dean said, punctuating every other word with another kiss, “Because you look like you haven’t laughed in four months, Sammy. I’m gonna make you laugh.”

He kissed lower, lavishing attention on Sam’s throat.

“I’m going to make you scream.”

Lower, circling Sam’s nipples with his tongue and making Sam gasp.

“I’m going to make you forget your _own_ name, and then we’ll be even, got it?”

Sam got it. He got it over and over as Dean claimed him, talked to him, spoke to him about every intimate secret no stranger could ever know. As they loved each other, body and soul.


End file.
